---Febreze (and other air fresheners actually) is just below perfumes/colognes, and that's just below dead skunks in terms of smells that offend my nose.MiquelFire.red | +MeWindows 8 is a toned, stylish, polished professional athlete. But it’s wearing clown makeup, and that creates a serious image problem. ~PCWorld Article

---Febreze (and other air fresheners actually) is just below perfumes/colognes, and that's just below dead skunks in terms of smells that offend my nose.MiquelFire.red | +MeWindows 8 is a toned, stylish, polished professional athlete. But it’s wearing clown makeup, and that creates a serious image problem. ~PCWorld Article

---Febreze (and other air fresheners actually) is just below perfumes/colognes, and that's just below dead skunks in terms of smells that offend my nose.MiquelFire.red | +MeWindows 8 is a toned, stylish, polished professional athlete. But it’s wearing clown makeup, and that creates a serious image problem. ~PCWorld Article

The U.S. will save a few trillion dollars that it would otherwise spend on the Paris deal.

1. The US was never going to actually follow through.2. A few trillion dollars is nothing compared to what it owes, or what it spends on less important things in a year. (But even if they didn't pull out, they wouldn't have actually met their goals, and would have spent a fraction of that trillion dollars you propose)3. Climate change is a real thing that we're already seeing impact some of our lives, and it's probably only going to get worse.4. Imagine what your grandchildren will have to look forward to if we do nothing to stabilize it.

Trump is certainly an ignorant fool, but I'm not sure Clinton would have done this any differently so there's that. The voting system is broken, but the voters are broken too. All by design.

Mainly I meant that you shouldn't have had to choose between Hillary and Trump.

I also included the UK voting system in my comment, since here you vote via FPTP (problem #1) for a local representative, and then the regions contribute their representatives again via FPTP (problem #2) to create a national government which serves a purpose other than local representation (problem #3).

Canada's system is also based on FPTP. And we are trying to get it changed to proportional representation. The current government naturally promised to do this during the election campaign, but once they got majority power they just decided not to change it. Funny that.

- Streets of Rogue is cool but only has a few hours of gameplay yet in alpha. So while it feels like a brand new experience, that experience has limited depth until they add more content.

- I got to the last level of Dune 2, beat GDI campaign in C&C, and am near the last level of the NOD campaign. Gonna hit Red Alert next. I'm going to put together a Game Mechanic History YouTube video using my notes and recordings of the playthroughs.

- Kerbal Space Program. GOT BOUGHT BY TAKE TWO INTERACTIVE which means, enjoy your $4.00 DLC rocket engines. Supposedly the original devs all already quit the team (8 before, and the original creator in 2016) which I didn't know. So all the "new team" (before Take-Two bought it) was just a bunch of "maintainers" instead of the original passionate devs. But lots of that is hearsay. Take-Two is also the owners of GTA which... gave legal take-down notices to multiplayer mod creators for GTA. (Multi-theft Auto). They made a single player game a multiplayer one... so Take-Two performed a takedown. And what other game also has single-player only with a multiplayer mod... oh yeah... Kerbal Space Program.

While I don't follow them much, Microsoft bought Minecraft and it hasn't completely exploded (and they made a C++ rewrite of the game but it doesn't support the same mod API... ugh...). I haven't played in years though so I couldn't tell you from experience whether Microsoft ruined/saved/maintained-the-status-quo.

I think there was another indie game that got bought that was "okay" but I can't remember.

On the other hand... Oculus Rift + Facebook = A dead project with a walled-garden that would make Steve Jobs/Apple go "Holy shit, that's a closed system". (Meanwhile, I keep seeing non-stop innovation of games using the HTC Vive. Too expensive for me, but still.)

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One thing I'm really surprised at is that OpenRA hasn't been taken down. You don't even have to own the original games to play it! My guess here, is that they're using freely available "demo game" data which is why you need the games to play Aftermath/Counterstrike/etc expansion packs. And they haven't added FMV's yet (IIRC) which would need the original disks.

But you can play campaign maps that were (hand made, but) based on those in the full game... so... where's the legal standard there?

And even if a demo is freely available, that's not a license to use the content however you want. I can't just download the demo of a game, rip the textures out, and use them in my game.

[edit]

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Since Electronic Arts have released both C&C and RA as freeware, we mirror stripped-down versions of the game's assets separately.

Okay, well that explains why they can do it, but OpenTTD and OpenRTC2 both require an original game installation on the computer.

-----sig:“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

While I don't follow them much, Microsoft bought Minecraft and it hasn't completely exploded (and they made a C++ rewrite of the game but it doesn't support the same mod API... ugh...). I haven't played in years though so I couldn't tell you from experience whether Microsoft ruined/saved/maintained-the-status-quo.

I hopped on the Minecraft bandwagon about a year after its launch, so I had the pleasure of seeing it grow out of beta into a full release and then be purchased by Microsoft. Thankfully, the buy-out hasn't resulted in any negative changes on PC. On consoles, they've been monetizing themed texture and map packs, but aside from that, I can't think of any major changes to the game or the business model.

I haven't heard of it being rewritten in C++ though. Where did you hear that? Knowing Microsoft, I'm surprised they didn't rewrite it in C#.

As for VR, that's a fad--an expensive one. I hope the technology and affordability improves, but it'll take time. Maybe in 10 years it'll be worth checking out.

But anyway, I recently started playing Sonic Generations again. I was a big Sonic fan as a kid, but the series was poorly managed and so quality dipped as a result. I'm just getting back into the games and am surprised to find a few really good ones. Generations in particular is surprisingly good; it has nice graphics and sounds, pays homage to past Sonic games, and has great levels. I'm looking forward to Sonic Forces (which is basically Sonic Generations 2) being as good as Generations.

Here's a comparison video (don't have audio right now so I can't confirm it's usefulness):

Speaking of Sonic. Get Sonic All Star Racing Transformed. It's worth every penny. It's got a CO OP career mode and there are like... 200 different rounds. There are much less tracks, but still plenty. And then there are game modes on those tracks like normal racing, racing without powerups, racing a ghost, FIGHTING A BOSS by keeping up with it and shooting it enough times while dodging it's shots (Starfox boss meets racing.) It's a SUPER fun game to play every night with your wife or girlfriend. And it's 4-player co-op. You can even GIVE your powerups to other players in co-op mode. So if the leader is doing all the work, and the second player is like 6th place, the second player can give the first his/her powerup to help the leader win.

-----sig:“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

Here's a comparison video (don't have audio right now so I can't confirm it's usefulness):

Interesting video. I did a few quick searches and it seems that the C++ version is essentially just a port of the "Pocket Edition" of the game, so it is missing many of the features from the Java version. Still neat though.

Quote:

Speaking of Sonic. Get Sonic All Star Racing Transformed.

Already got it. I have both "Sonic and SEGA All Stars Racing" and "Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed". The latter sadly does not have Billy Hatcher as a player.

I find it funny the comparison video the person's computer can barely run the Java version without it getting noticeably slow.

---Febreze (and other air fresheners actually) is just below perfumes/colognes, and that's just below dead skunks in terms of smells that offend my nose.MiquelFire.red | +MeWindows 8 is a toned, stylish, polished professional athlete. But it’s wearing clown makeup, and that creates a serious image problem. ~PCWorld Article

The other day, I found myself perusing the Android development section of my local library. Every book on the shelf had the same Chapter One: "Java." It left the impression that non-Java Android development does not exist.